How to Host a Dungeon by Tony Dowler is an interesting example of a tool you can use for something I call layering.
Whatever you choose to call it, layering is a powerful way to make your setting interesting, dynamic and unique.
For those of you who haven’t seen it HtHaD is a ‘solo game’ using dice, pencils and paper that you use to (semi-) randomly generate the layout, contents and history of a D&D-style mega-dungeon. Each time you ‘play’, you build up a unique dungeon through a series of epochs, starting with a map showing ‘virgin’ bedrock and ending with a large-scale section view of a complex mega-dungeon.
But the game also leaves you with an extensive history of many communities, monsters and resources that existed in the mega-dungeon at different times. Most will be long gone by the time you finish building the mega-dungeon. But in your records you can see, for example, that there was a dragon, long ago. You know when the dragon arrived, where it laired, who it ate, how it died and what has happened to its treasure. In each part of the dungeon you know what kinds of folk (or natural forces) made or occupied it, and when. It's like having a detailed archaeology of the place. So if D&D-style dungeons are your thing, go check it out; there’s a free download available.
Playing HtHaD is a bit of fun in itself, if you have any feeling for D&D. Tony Dowler has put quite a bit of thought into how the game elements interact to create fun, variety and interest. He’s a clever guy.
But the idea that really excites me is how you can use the resulting history in your role playing games. Each spot on the map comes readymade with a complex, unique storyline that forms part of the larger whole. While only a handful of communities are likely to survive in the ‘present day’, history will record dozens of monsters, communities and heroes that came and went.
Each of these will have left traces of some kind - objects, treasures, stains, pets, technologies, languages, stories, genes, graves, artworks, cultural influences. And that makes it much easier to come up with ideas for small-scale dungeons that mesh to form a diverse but integrated whole. Equally important, it makes it easy to invent consistent and interesting content on the fly.
Now How to Host a Dungeon is a niche tool for a niche interest. But the layering principle is useful in many, many role playing games. For example, its pretty hard to create a good murder mystery without layering the history. Think about it.
Of course, you can layer lots of things besides history: plots, relationships, meaning, existence, ground scale, timescale and probably others.
What these different kinds of layers have in common is that they increase the cohesion of the setting by establishing hidden order. This can help your game in many ways: stimulating creativity, easing GM judgements, improving co-ordination among players and influencing play in novel and unexpected ways. Those kinds of goals are especially important if you’re interested in the world, as I am
Next: Who cares about the world?
Soon: Ways to layer history
